Guild Wars 2

Irenio and ArenaNet, could we PLEASE have our pets’ F2 ability be selectable? You all have heard the community. Our suggestions, ideas, and feedback on this class that we all love to play so much.

With recent events regarding a certain pet’s F2 ability (the Smokescale), is there any way you would consider having the F2 ability be selectable just like our other utilities, heals, and elites? A tab above the pet’s F2 to be selectable when out of combat to choose between its unique or one of two family-wide skills.

Yes, it will not be as great as having full control over all 3 pet skills, however, it would be a Monumental Quality of Life change for the class and allowing for more diversity and flexibility for more styles of play and situations.

At the very least, could you (ArenaNet and most importantly, Irenio) think about this? It’s a small, yet, drastic change that would be very healthy for the Ranger profession. Below is an image for reference. I posted this in another topic before but now I want to center a thread around it.

Cheers and +1 if you support this small, QoL change.

For the love of god. Please do that arenanet! Please. Do. That.

Bump.

Unlikely as this will require an overhaul in programming for the pets. Also, it would create some ungodly combinations that would have the PvP community in tears. Ahem. But it would be a nice change.

As someone who much preferred smoke assault for the f2 on the Smoke Skale I cannot bump this enough. Unlike the smoke field, smoke assault actually worked in applying the weakness from the wilting strike trait, even in aoe if he bounced between targets. Now the trait is useless for this pet.

Conversely I can also see the benefit of having an on demand smoke field. Giving us the option would really help give both sides what they want.

Bumping this. It would help satisfy players and let some less-used pets see the light of day in higher-level play. (The ability to turn on/off pet skills in the pet menu would be of great benefit, too. Please, let me turn off my silly bird’s swiftness.)

Well, actually two controllable pet skills would be much more awesome ^^

Also, it would create some ungodly combinations that would have the PvP community in tears.

Like what? Easy access to aoe swiftness for rangers? On demand knockdowns and knockbacks? Even tail swipe and poison fields? Tell me your secrets in PM pls

This would be amazing!

Bump

/15 Char

Just do it Arenanet.

Would prefer having full access to all the skills of the pet, rather than selecting a single one from its skill list, then havingto leave the rest of the skills up to AI when to decide to use it. But of course, that would be too confusing for new players would it -looks at ele attunements and engi tool belt-

Great suggestion, I’m all about dat boss.

If they would allow this, they would also have to implement some way of disabling skills you wouldnt want to cast…

OGDeadHead.8326:

If they would allow this, they would also have to implement some way of disabling skills you wouldnt want to cast…

Like what? This is exactly why they SHOULD implement this. I would pick the kittening bird swiftness cast as f2 so that it would no longer suddenly occur when my bird is one attack close to killing a target. Enemy almost dead? Nope. Let’s cast kittening swiftness.

While this would make it more interesting for us rangers, it would be a source of frustration for others.

With that said I do like the idea of begin able to disable a skill/skills (maybe through the pet management tab).

Dojo.1867:

OGDeadHead.8326:

If they would allow this, they would also have to implement some way of disabling skills you wouldnt want to cast…

I would pick the kittening bird swiftness cast as f2 so that it would no longer suddenly occur when my bird is one attack close to killing a target. Enemy almost dead? Nope. Let’s cast kittening swiftness.

You mean you really would give up Bristleback or Smokescale for that, right?

DoogySnowStalker.2069:

Would prefer having full access to all the skills of the pet, rather than selecting a single one from its skill list, then havingto leave the rest of the skills up to AI when to decide to use it. But of course, that would be too confusing for new players would it -looks at ele attunements and engi tool belt-

Yeah, I would love to have that instead. I even made a suggestion topic for it in the past. One that would allow an option for more control over pets for advanced players or retain the current interface for beginners/people that like it as it is. Unfortunately, it didn’t receive any traction except for an incoherent response, then was buried in the sub-forum.

Optional Manual Pet Control

I’m still waiting to see a more organized pet selection panel, as that actually received a developer response when it was posted by a fellow Ranger on Reddit.

Dojo.1867:

OGDeadHead.8326:

If they would allow this, they would also have to implement some way of disabling skills you wouldnt want to cast…

Like what? This is exactly why they SHOULD implement this. I would pick the kittening bird swiftness cast as f2 so that it would no longer suddenly occur when my bird is one attack close to killing a target. Enemy almost dead? Nope. Let’s cast kittening swiftness.

If you want to control Wolfs knockdown, maybe you don’t want it to autocast fear, for example. Same with smokescale, I don’t want to have it autocast smokefield whenever it feels like it like it was before. Surely you can see the potential issues with this?

Either they open up the whole ai for allowing us to disable skills and/or allow us to control every skill (or at least two of them), or they leave the current system as it is.

The point is that they will never allow us to control all 3 (non autoattack) skills. They just don’t want that.

So I rather am able to decide what skill I want to control and with which I am okay if the pet casts them via AI. I mean honestly. This is a straight improvement from the current situation. You would be able to pick. If you don’t like it just pick the old f2.

You guys want too much and will get nothing by that.

Bump so much

OGDeadHead.8326:

If you want to control Wolfs knockdown, maybe you don’t want it to autocast fear, for example. Same with smokescale, I don’t want to have it autocast smokefield whenever it feels like it like it was before. Surely you can see the potential issues with this?

Either they open up the whole ai for allowing us to disable skills and/or allow us to control every skill (or at least two of them), or they leave the current system as it is.

Too bad they won’t allow skill disabling on pets as we already deal with this, in particular, a pet automatically Fearing a foe: The Shark. Don’t forget that the entire issue came with the Smokescale’s F2 being changed out, and believe it or not, there were Rangers that preferred control over Smoke Assault and did not mind the automatic Smokefield, as it did not interfere with their playstyle.

Anet would probably see more issues with disabling pet skills since the pet selection as its memory is already in a wonky state. Would they be able to or care to implement saving disabled pet skills on every pet selected? If not, pet skill disabling would have to reset each new pet selection in each game mode. The like can be said about a selectable F2, but there are less drawbacks as its 1 skill of a potential 3 and can be done cleanly without opening another interface (the selection panel).

They, and I, also realize that there are Rangers out there that do not change their pet selections at all or very little: and that doesn’t matter in the wider scope of what problems can emit with a variety of players.

Until they realize that a Ranger controlling the other 3 pet skills (excluding auto attack) on F1-F3 is reasonable ala Engineer, Elementalist, and to an extent Mesmer; a selectable F2 is about the closest (and realistic) compromise to reaching a satisfaction between both parties (advanced Ranger players and the developers).

For the love of everything, NO!

The only suggestion for this should be full control over pet skills. This would be a HUGE QoL change, provide increased depth to the class as a whole, and I would think increase pet diversity based on builds.

Imagine having control over CC skills, burst skills, defensive skills, and misc pet skills that are just randomly used and hardly connect on core GW2 pets. Full control would increase the skill cap for the class and provide a huge boost to all ranger builds in general.

Ye but all pet skills being controllable wont happen. People here really must be new to this game. If you want things to happen ask for little changes, small steps.

If they somewhere in the future would allow full control, I truly hope they would also allow to toggle these skills for autocast as well – all of them.

Even today I must confess I sometimes struggle with using some pet skills as they are ready, mostly hawks and tiger (short cd F2 skills), especially while at the same time keeping track of myself and my surroundings.

It would be good in theory, but I can bet that even the most hardcore rangers out there would miss out on a few good rotations keeping track of 3 additional skills on the pet.
All good in theory, but give options for autocast like they work now (I wouldn’t mind being able to autocast F2 right now for some pets tbh).